About Me

When not nosing, tasting, drinking and reading about malt whisky, I own one of Israel's premiere boutique coaching practices, specializing in small businesses and executive teams.
Trained in the law, I was an international law attorney and took part in Israel's peace negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as representing my country at the UN for parts of the negotiations on the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Later I was appointed to the military bench.
My favorite thing, other than whisky, is teaching.
You can contact me through the social media buttons above or by email: michael(at)maltandoak.com, replacing the (at) with an @.

Statement of Integrity and Guidelines

Malt and Oak is an independent whisky blog, offering my own views, opinions and news from the world of malt whisky.
These are my guidelines:

1. All whisky reviews published are of whiskies I have personally tasted and noted. Guest bloggers only write about their own personal tastings.

2. With the exception of official whisky samples, I accept no consideration whatsoever from any distillery, bottler, distributor, drink company or store for my opinions.

3. I maintain strict impartiality and objectivity in tasting all whiskies, not least when tasting official samples. Any review of official whisky samples sent to me will be so noted in the post.

4. I will accept invitations to tastings, events and official visits, and full disclosure will be made on any tasting notes and articles resulting from these events or visits.

5. Any sample received over 30 ml in volume is shared with fellow whisky bloggers. In any event, no sample larger than 100 ml will be accepted.

6. No advertisements promoting specific brands will be accepted.

7. I will answer any inquiry by my readers as quickly and as fully as possible.

8. Should I give a link purchase the reviewed whisky, it will be given free of any commercial interest. The link given will always point to cheapest selling price I found on the web. No commission is paid, nor any other consideration given, for such link.

9. As of July 2017, I serve as Douglas Laing’s Israel brand ambassasdor. As such, I will obviously not be posting reviews of Douglas Laing products.

Posts Tagged “Peat”

Loch Lomond distillery is a behemoth of fascination, with four different styles of stills churning out a staggering 13 types of single malt out of traditional pot stills and straight necked stills with rectifiers. Croftenga is the name given Loch Lomond’s heavily peated malt, that was distilled in Inchmurrin’s straight necked stills, but made from…

Whiskybase, the Dutch database for all things whisky, currently holds 105,624 listings of bottles of whisky (and there will be more by the time you check). Granted, some of them are double (or quadruple) listings of the same bottle, but just think of the vastness of the achievement: Successfully creating, and maintaining, a community generated, free…

Lagavulin is one of those distilleries not overly crazy on having their name on independent bottlings. That’s not to say that they don’t sell young spirit, on the contrary, and it’s not even that hard to come by, but it’s still not common to see indies telling you where it’s from. But wait, that’s not…

Balvenie’s travel retail range holds the 12, 16 and 25. This range is matured in refill ex bourbon, first fill ex bourbon casks and first fill Oloroso sherry casks. I reviewed the Balvenie 25 year old, and was not blown away, if I put it mildly, and found it somewhat strange. 2017 saw the coming…

Springbank is such an interesting distillery not only because of their staunchly traditional ways, but also due to the variety of whisky they produce. For the Springbank Society releases, the same fresh Sauternes casks were used for Springbank (lightly peated, partial triple distillation), Longrow (heavily peated, double distillation) and Hazelburn (unpeated, triple distillation), and it…